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World of Wine: My wine choice along the route of Le Tour

Neal Jones

For Vamonos

Posted:
07/23/2014 02:35:22 PM MDT

Chateau Rives Blanques, outside Limoux. (Courtesy Neal Jones)

As I have done with Le Tour de France every year, I pick a place or an appellation along the bicycle race route to highlight some of France's great wine products. One of the race's start cities is from the southern city of Limoux.

As I also try to find good values, this year is an exceptional option to Champagne. These are the sparkling wines known as Blanquette de Limoux.

What makes these wines different from traditional Champagne is the grape. Most of the famous Champagnes are made from the Pinot Noir grape. The Blanc Champagnes are made from the Chardonnay grape. Blanquette de Limoux wines are made with the Mauzac grape.

The Abbey of Saint-Hilaire. (Courtesy Neal Jones)

Limoux is one of two key areas that grow the Mauzac for wine in France. The other area is the Gaillac area. But, in Limoux the Mauzac is required to be included in the making of Blanquette de Limoux.

Mauzac buds and ripens late, and was traditionally picked quite late, when temperatures had dropped in Limoux. This allowed for slow fermentation, which preserved residual sugar for a natural secondary fermentation in the spring, creating a sparkling wine.

The grape is one of the seven permitted white grape varieties that are permitted in producing Bordeaux wine.

Some of the growers around the Limoux area will collect an early harvest when the grapes are higher in acidity that delivers a more crisp, almost tart-like flavor. When doing that they sacrifice the fuller aromas of the later harvest.

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Other makers are blending their Blanquette de Limoux wines with Chenin Blanc or Chardonnay. These blends will keep the resulting wine in drier characteristics while the aromatic blends of Gaillac Mauzac will be made with the Len de I'El.

These sparkling wines may be found under other names like Blanquette Méthode Ancestrale, Crémant Limoux and, in some cases just Limoux. The Limoux wine on the label can also be a still wine. All four names are legal usage for the Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) designations.

The wine communes around Limoux are considered of the Aude Department in the Languedoc-Roussillon Region. It is about the halfway point between Limoux and Carcassonne where you'll find the abbey and commune of Saint-Hilaire. The monks making wine in the abbey of Saint-Hilaire had written records of making sparkling wine that dates back to 1531, records that pre-date the Benedictine monk Dom Perignon by more than 100 years. There are wine historians that say the Blanquette de Limoux sparkling wine is the oldest sparkling wine known in the world.

The name Blanquette de Limoux has been used for a long time for the sparkling wines from Limoux. "Blanquette" actually just means "white" in the local Occitan language. Blanquette de Limoux can contain the three white grape varieties I mentioned earlier, but Mauzac which must constitute a minimum of 90 percent of the wine to have the Limoux AOC.

The creation of the AOC was one of the earliest in France, and the second-oldest in the Languedoc region, signed in 1938. But it was in 1990 when the preservation of using Mauzac grapes was put into the AOC qualifications.

There is a sub-category of wine and a separate AOC known as Blanquette Méthode Ancestrale. This is used for a sweetish sparkling wine made in a more old-fashioned way, without disgorgement. It is produced in the same area as Blanquette de Limoux, and may only contain Mauzac. Due to the absence of disgorgement, these wines are generally very cloudy with particles of the sediment of dead yeast cells, known as lees, still present in the wine. The wine making method used to make Blanquette méthode ancestrale is also known as the méthode gaillacoise and is used to make the sparkling Mousseux wine of the Gaillac AOC. This method involves traditional hand crafted wine making, with minimum use of modern technology such as stainless steel fermentation tanks. The resulting wines are typically low in alcohol (often less than 7 percent by volume), with sweet apple-like flavors and a slight sparkling fizz.

The taste of this Mauzac based wine is unique, with apple flavors and distinctive aromas of fresh cut grass that can be identified when the wine is served closer to room temperature and not too chilled.

I found a number of vendors on both coasts with examples of Blanquette de Limoux in the dry Brut versions for less than $12 a bottle. Even the rarer semi-sweet versions were available for less than $16. These wines have a wonderful history and are a refreshing change from the traditional Champagne and other sparkling wines.

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